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While Windows Vista has a whole host of new features to offer, it has one major problem that just won’t go away: it’s totally FUBAR’d after you resume from sleep or hibernate. Unfortunately, many of these issues weren’t present during the beta stage, and were somehow introduced in the RTM build of Windows Vista. This exclusive NeoSmart Technologies report describes some of the symptoms in detail, and we even provide links to possible fixes by Microsoft. All issues have been duly reported and confirmed by Microsoft, so this isn’t just some figment of our imagination. A number of these patches are scheduled to be included in Windows Vista SP1 (Codename Fiji).

Few computer “enthusiasts” turn off their PCs. Even with Bill Gate’s promised 6-second-boot (we’ve clocked an average of 42.6 seconds here on 8 different PCs), turning on a PC via a cold-boot requires waiting for all the various programs to load, the network to establish, the security policies to propogate; and you don’t get to brag about never turning off your PC – plus your uptime restarts. The alternatives were either hibernation (for laptop owners) or “Deep Sleep” for the rest.1

Throughout the beta, Deep Sleep in Windows Vista went great. It’s the default option (so long as it’s configured in the BIOS) when you click the shutdown button.2 It would put your computer in a low-power mode that recovered in a matter of 2 or 3 seconds, and didn’t crash! But in the final version of Windows Vista, something is very, very majorly wrong. On 6 of the 8 tested systems,3 recovering Windows Vista from a hibernate or Deep Sleep results in one of the following:

When recovering from a hibernate: “Cannot find uxtheme.dll” appears whenever you attempt to run (almost) any program. No matter what you do, you can’t even run Task Manager. What’s worse, a restart doesn’t fix it, and because Windows Explorer also fails to launch with this error, you need to boot from the DVD and use System Restore – Safe Mode won’t work!4

Failure to establish a network connection. Everything looks OK, but you can’t connect to the internet. Your LAN signal will be there, but the internet just doesn’t work. You must restart to fix it.

Poor performance: though Task Manager will show normal CPU load, some of the drivers (they don’t appear in TaskMan) will attempt to use 100% of the CPU, resulting in a very laggy PC. You need to restart to fix it.

No DWM. For no reason, DWM just won’t re-appear. This happens on ATi and nVidia, with or without the latest official drivers from the companies themselves. Manually running “dwm.exe” doesn’t work, you need to restart to fix it.

BSOD on recovery. This is usually caused by the video drivers, and may or may not indicate something wrong with the kernel itself.

No sound. Vista goes mute. Nothing you can do about it, no way to revive it, you just have to restart and let the re-done sound-stack load-up the way it should.

All of the above errors and more occur randomly and make using hibernation down-right impossible (unless you’re willing/eager to run System Recovery from the DVD!) and Deep Sleep a waste of time (seeing as you have to restart to “quick recover”). Most of the errors are indicative of a problem somewhere deep in the kernel, and it’s not going to be easy to fix it. Some people are blaming this on the PC/Hardware/BIOS itself, but it’s not the BIOS’ job to support the OS,5 and the only thing to blame here is a buggy ACPI model.

We’ve notified Microsoft of each of these errors, we’ve been told they’re real bugs and a fix is in the works for some issues, others are just as much of a mystery. Some of these can be solved when ATi and nVidia release their final (hopefully bug-free) drivers for Vista. Others may not be as willing to go away. Either way, an operating system that you have to shutdown in order to save on power isn’t exactly the biggest business model. The only good news is, this bug only recently made its way into Vista, so that may just mean it won’t be too hard to squash. For now, if you really need to keep your PC on all day and all night, check the list below for hotfixes that may work for you.

Patches by Microsoft(Updated 06/12/07)

Here’s a list of patches by Microsoft related to Vista and wake/resume problems. You may have to call MS directly for access to some of these patches. Stop errors are blue screens (BSODs).

“Deep Sleep” is configured in the BIOS, and refers to the use of S3 power-saving mode instead of the default S1 setting. In S3, you’re machine actually kills the power to everything but the memory, and uses up about as much power as a single, tiny light (like those powering up your Christmas lights). And you get to instantly turn your PC back on, with all your programs running and in a matter of seconds (for real!). At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. ↩

As opposed to using the shutdown menu, and selecting an option from there. ↩

I have windows vista ultimate, use to run win xp no problems, before i purchased windows vista I ran a check to see if my system was capable of running vista, Microsoft confirmed ok, well, maybe that is because they just want to sell the software, I have had nothing but problems with it, it is always shutting my system down, I have a ABit AS8 motherboard, with P4, and 500 watt power pack, Ati Radeon 9550 graphics card, yet i will just be surfing the net and my comp shuts down, saying problem with cpu, if someone has any suggestions I would appreciate comments. I have updated the Graphic card drivers, but i really find everything to be really slow, I have same specs as my husbands comp, yet he continues to run XP, to be honest I wish I had to. Windows Vista is a waste of money in my opinion. This is just from personal experience. By the way all items are only 3mths old. Ran checks no problems seem to be found. Just Vista creates them, Vista is Spoofed its like my comp is haunted.

i found a solution with windows vista installaion crashing. I bought a new 512 md X1650 ati video card. I put the card in Before when i was running XP. When i wanted to upgeade, the computer would crash after the second reboot duing instaliation. “it was configuring the desktops resalution and would crash. So i put an old nvidia 128 mb card that i had laying around and Voala. the instalation finishe and then i pluged the new 512 mb after the installation and now i type this message.

i know it sucks that yopu have to do all this just to upgrade. Hello Up “F”-ing Grade to a NEW operating system.

Well i guess vista i worht it some how. Hey look its a imac, i thing i want to visit.

Well, if your vista does not wake up from sleep mode, make sure that your jumpers are set correctly. On my ASUS P5B, there is a specific jumper setting to wake up the computer from S1 sleep mode (+5V), another setting to wake up from S3 and S4 sleep modes (+5VSB). Vista’s sleep mode is S3.

Got a problem myself with the sleep on my Windows Vista Premium. Seems that it won’t stay asleep when I tell if to…so either my computer is an insomniac or some program is telling it to revive before I get the chance to do so. It will only stay in the low power state for about 30 seconds before it wakes up on its own.

Thanks DiGi, but I’ve been there & it is set to sleep. But what I have found is that Vista does a S4 hibinate aswell as the S3 deep sleep (It does both at the same time) just incase you get a power cut while in S3 sleep.

So now I know that my problem is the fact that it does go into the S3 sleep mode, so I have to reboot the computer & it resumes from the S4 state.

I find it extremely amusing that ANYONE would report there are no problems with sleep/hibernation/deep sleep/WHATEVER recovery in Vista….see, the whole reason 90% of the people who read this article were here in the first place is that they were Googling for a solution to that precise issue. I know that’s why I’M here! I shudder to think how much MS shelled out to have people trolling all the tech sites and leave positive or negative-refuting feedback in a desperate effort to keep a lid on the 7 year mistake that is Vista.

I just bought a BRAND NEW Acer laptop for my sister – mid-range horsepower dealie but LIGHT years beyond her old one…and I promised her it would be better behaved than her previous Windows 98 machine because Vista was so much more advanced than 98….what a load of horse poo! I KNEW I should have hunted around for an XP license and nuked Vista before she ever had to see it. She wouldn’t have had a better go with the sleep problems, but at least she wouldn’t have to suffer through the slow boot up, the ridiculous gyrations it takes to do ANYTHING that only took 2 mouse clicks in XP and everything else that makes Vista a dud.

Her laptop NEVER comes back from hibernation properly…unless she gets there like 5 minutes after it goes to sleep. Otherwise she has to hard boot it EVERY TIME…and even then it’s not a perfect recovery – with incessant messages about the machine “Not being shut down properly”…yeah…we KNOW it wasn’t shut down properly – can you PLEASE just BOOT UP so I can move on with my life!?

First chance I get I’m switching her over to Kubuntu. DAMN YOU MICROSOFT!!!

I won?t even begin to explain how much time I?ve spent dealing with the slow Vista issue. It?s not only ?Sleep? issue but it also often shows up after your computer has been On for longer period of time.

CPU ? Ok , Memory ? OK ? PC slow as snail.

I?ve bought my HP Pavilion notebook 7-8 months ago and it?s been pain since then. I tried reinstalling most hardware devise drivers many times. I?ve preinstalled Vista itself at least 5-6 times – both from the ghost image that came with the PC and from disk. Every time after few days or weeks I was at square one again. After almost giving up a month ago I?ve tried to exchange my Vista license for XP from HP. However it turned out HP won?t do it. Even more – the laptop was build exclusively for Vista and HP doesn?t have and wouldn?t support drivers for XP. On top the nVidia?s card and driver are made specifically for HP and nVidia doesn?t even list the card as available option at ?choose you card model? but advises you to go to your manufacturer web site instead for driver support.

After researching the issue I?ve for some reason decided it?s the PCI bus fault. Here?s how I fixed the issue on my computer. Try at your own risk.

First make sure to download all drivers for your PC from your manufacturer web site and put them in a folder in case you need some of them later(don?t know if this is HP or Vista specific but my pc stores them in C:\SwSetup and I put them there too). Preferably connect to internet using cable instead of wireless (helps windows connect to internet easier and find drivers if needed) .

Now go to Control Panel >> open Device Manager >> expand System Devices >> find ?PCI bus? near the end. Right click and choose Uninstall. Confirm. That will trigger reinstallation of the PCI Driver and some other drivers on your system. Windows will take care for most of them. You may need to restart few times. Check afterwards your PC for sound and other hardware misbehaviors and install the driver for that device from device manager or the folder with downloaded drivers you?ve created earlier.

Hope this works for you. My laptop has been running better than clean Vista install since then.

I am using Lenovo 3000 N100 (with 2GB Membory) with Windows Vista Business. A horrible experiance? I dont understand what Microsoft wants to prove with this half backed graphics junk. Most horrifying experiance in my 16 years of IT life.

i see you all enjoy some of the issues with vista, we found machines we just couldnt fix and initially were advising folks to stay away from vista. then we made a discovery on the microsoft partners site. microsoft sent out an information brief to all computer builders advising them that vista needed to have acpi version 2 or higher on its bios for vista to work properly. we run a computer repair shop and nearly all the problem computers were on the cheaper end of the spectrum and we discovered that they were all mass produced and were all good mates with microsoft and were all selling out there old wharehouse stocks. all the machines had one thing in common. acpi version 1.1 on the bios.

its not on the microsoft technet because then it would be a known issue and those large companies who are now updating the bios or giving refunds to complaining clients on the quiet made a fortune while getting rid of there obsolete and not so vista compatible stocks. the info brief from microsoft said you must upgrade your bios to meet the requirements. i now upgrade the bios or replace the mother boards on the cheaper machines with the acpi issue and all is well.

With regards to the resolution change: this is a confirmed Windows Vista bug that resets graphics adapters after resume/wake. Most display adapter manufacturers have around it with new drivers, but it can still be seen in the form of the loss of gamma settings when you wake/resume your Vista PC: http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/windows-vistas-gamma-table-bug/

I can’t believe it, we finally bought a new computer, and we hve to use our old laptop. Windows Vista has a major problem. Hibernate and sleep mode will not recover. We do not know what to do. We were told not to download anything from microsoft, because that was our problem. Then we were told we had to download updates to fix our problem. I am not a computer whiz. What do we do? mel

..neighbour just bought a new Dell 3GB computer with Vista Home Pr.
The very first day it had the stupidest error message I’ve seen, paraphrased:

Windows Explorer has an unexplained error do you wish to shut down Windows?

Then double click on a normal jpg file. Windows viewer comes on, but try to print with it. Wants to print to some Windows X writer, and doesn’t recognize the install HP printer. So try to add it (again) says COPY 1, ok, but then gets a system error.

Bought a brand new Gateway GT5630E, Upgraded to 4 Gigs of RAM
Nothing else done. Win Vista Home Premium
System hangs up..after i walk away, after a few minutes.
I come back and monitor is off. I can hear a noise like its trying to turn on the monitor, wakeup. Nothing I do wakes it up.

I turn it off and then on..it boots up but I can’t run
control panel, can’t run personalize to change settings on screen saver, wallpaper,etc
Can’t run any games from the games folder.

Only solution is to reboot, go to F8 and do a restore!
But do a restore 2-20 times daily? I use the ‘puter all day long trading.

about a week ago, i installed the SP1 update. ironically, it brought back all the problems I had. when i got my laptop everything was working fine, then one day, the sleep and hibernate would not wake up, i fixed that by basically uninstalling all the updates for vista… the sp1 brought that back so i uninstalled it. to me, there are still problems with my computer to the point that i SERIOUSLY cannot tell the difference with SP1…other than that it recognizes 4gb of ram though it still utilizes 3gb. but for me, problems still exist and annoyed me so i uninstalled it. i was thinking about re-installing it after the launch or a month after.

HERE’S A WAY TO MAKE VISTA BOOT WHEN IT WON’T WAKE AFTER SLEEP/HIBERNATE:
1. Turn off computer.
2. Remove one of the RAM chips (or change to a different one)
3. Start the computer.
4. Windows will inform you that RAM has changed and ask if you want to delete the restoration data. Confirm that you want to delete it.
5. Start in normal mode.
After it reboots you can do a regular shut down, replace the RAM and restart as usual.
This is a bull*** problem that no other company could get away with. Imagine if every single car that a major manufacturer made had a problem where it wouldn’t start if it was turned off while the lights were on or something similar. There would be a major recall and/or law suit. Where’s the lawsuit agains Microsoft for this lame problem?
At least the “fix” above will get people’s computers running so they can email their attorneys/congressmen etc.

Just bought another puter, why? on sale. $478 delivered.
Its a Dell, dude!
Inspiron 530. Core 2 Quad, Q6600, 1Gb RAM (slow, will upgrade later)
Will not take more than 4GB on MB but can live with that since am not upgrading
to 64 bit OS anytime soom.
Does not take IDE, only SATA, guess its ok, so system wont use slow HDs

Came with Vista Home Basic
Went to Craigslist and bought a Dell reinstalltion CD,
says Windows XP/SP2, cost 15 bucks
Reformatted the HD and installed XP. No activation, no key required, no hassles
Runs good, so far. Hope I am legal
So will have 2 puters, one running XP PRO other running Vista Home Premium.

My problems listed above are not as often occurring.
Seems all of the updates ( all up to date/current) might have made the problems less of a pain. Don’t have to reboot as often. Before, it was a few times a DAY
Now it one or two, a week.

Ever since the start of February I have had a lot of problems with my laptop, especially the sleep mode. Its a compaq presario c700, bought in early November new. It has always been really really slow, definately no 6 second boot up time… I’m lucky if it starts in 90 seconds but that is another issue in entirety. I recently upgraded my memory from 1 gig to 2 gigs thinking that would help with everything. Nope. Now I’m having issues with the sleep and because it happened right around the time that upgraded I was thinking that it was faulty memory. So here is the issue, it will not go into sleep mode. With in 30 seconds of shutting the lid, or 3-4 minutes of inactivity it shuts down completely, and then when you go to resume it comes up with a post saying something along the lines of Windows did not shut down properly and gives you the option to start in Safe mode or Start normally. I have tried the Hybrid Sleep which I think defeats the purpose of sleep. It basicly restarts itself and skips the log in process. Is this an update issue? And if so could someone please give me some tips on removing the affected update? Thanks!

I don’t know if i passed it reading most of these articles, But my problem is when i use windows vista orb/start/ball whatever to put my system to SLEEP only the screen turns black and everything still seems to be running. I’ve noticed that if my laptop is unplugged (running on battery)it will then go into a SLEEP mode where the Hard Drive LED slowly pulses and was wondering if anybody has a resolution for this little problem i am having.
Dell Insirion 1420
Intel Core Duo CPU
T5450 @ 1.66 GHz 1.67 GHz
2 GHz RAM
32-Bit
Windows Vista Home Premium

Well i did a little research on my own and sound a solution. I found a website cant remember the site URL but it stated that if i when into power options and created my own power scheme and fiddled with the sleep options and got it to work the way i wanted it to

How odd. Prior to Vista SP1 x4 I could sleep, hibernate all day long. After SP1, if I try to manually sleep, my laptop looks like it’s going to sleep, then it reboots. If I let the power options timers run, I sleep just fine.

If I try to hibernate manually, again, my laptoop lookslike it’s going to hibernate, then it reboots instead.

I do have the hiberfil.sys file; I’ve tried powercfg -h off & -on again, no luck.

The only thing I can think of doing is deleting that file, then trying to recreate it.

My HP Pavilion PC a6130n never boots up after hibernation until I have physically unplugged it. Usually unplugging it for ONLY an hour or two will not work. Unplugging overnight USUALLY works. When I get lucky and unplugging overnight does work, I am able to reboot only after telling Vista to reboot from scratch and delete the information that was saved so the machine could “wake up” from hibernation.

I was told by my friendly HP dealer that this problem is very common and that I would just have to live with it until MS comes out with a fix, but that in the meantime I could log in as the administrator and turn off hibernation. I did that but the problem persists with no noticeable change whatever.

Any suggestions. I can’t sit by the computer and type something every few minutes to keep it from going into hibernation and I can’t afford to be without my computer overnight every time it does hibernate.

My HP Pavilion PC a6130n never boots up after hibernation until I have physically unplugged it. Usually unplugging it for ONLY an hour or two will not work. Unplugging overnight USUALLY works. When I get lucky and unplugging overnight does work, I am able to reboot only after telling Vista to reboot from scratch and delete the information that was saved so the machine could wake up from hibernation.

I was told by my friendly HP dealer that this problem is very common and that I would just have to live with it until MS comes out with a fix, but that in the meantime I could log in as the administrator and turn off hibernation. I did that but the problem persists with no noticeable change whatever.

Any suggestions. I can’t sit by the computer and type something every few minutes to keep it from going into hibernation and I can’t afford to be without my computer overnight every time it does hibernate.

It dounds to me like you have a BIOS setting which is putting your machine to sleep. I have seen similar issues on a variety of systems, and if it still sleeps after disabling hibernation and standby, it is most likely that the BIOS is taking over and forcing the issue. There may be some compatibility issue which keeps Vista from reacting properly, so you may need to disable sleep in the BIOS, as well.

Contrary to suggestions that most “Professionals” or serious computer users do not shutdown, I don;t think that can be generalized. Each person has a personal preference based on software requirements, laziness, or a host of other quirks which guide thair choice of power usage.

Personally, I try to balance my power bill with what is going on. I typically shut down when not in use, and only run for long periods when doing system maintenenace (updates, defrag, etc) or when batch processing large video or audio files which needs to run uninterrupted. But that’s just me.

One concern I have which keeps me rebooting periodically is to make sure it WILL reboot. This is true of PCs at home, as well as production servers I am responsible for which might run for weeks at a time, and then not come up when restarted, because someone changed something without proper documentation.

Well, I would consider myself a guru of sorts when it comes to building and understanding how to fix usually every problem I have run into with pc’s I have had. This has always been on an xp machine, which I still do not have any problems with. Purchased an acer the other day, has xp, sleep/hibernate mode/vista, all suck. I will try the bios s3 to s1 trick, but imo vista has nothing to offer that xp didnt already do in a better way.
My problem: sleep/hibernate whatever it is, will not work when I try to resume. Will usually make it back to the login screen, but the cursor and everything else just freezes, with no hd/cpu activity or anything, and am forced to shut down via power button (which is really really stupid). Looking for hotfix…found nothing.

How much longer must we put up with this problem?
It’s been an ongoing issue since Vista was released (foisted) on the public. Having just installed an out of the box new HP desktop, it fails miserably to recover after a power saving shut-down from the screen saver mode. IT BSOD’s !!!

I know there may be a fix from the many posted, but WHY? after all this time, is it still happening?

Shame on both M$ & HP for allowing this to continue for almost 2 years.

Why should users who don’t have a clue, have to deal with this problem. Please, don’t tell me I need to check/install the latest drivers, BIOS or M$ patches. I’ve already done that (it shouldn’t have been necessary with the latest HP! from a large retail chain) & it still BSOD’s!

Had the same issues with a gateway gt5630e.
Solved by:
turning sleep off
updated window vista home P with all updates including sp1
was a nightmare until I upgraded vista, also applied a hotfix or 2 but do not remember which ones.

My sleep and hibernate worked great when I first got my computer. It soon started crashing when going into either mode. I checked out System Config (Run…msconfig) and saw that OpenCase Media Agent was loading up and had no idea what it was. Googled it and saw that it loaded up with NBC Direct (which never worked well anyway). Deleted both of them and sleep and hibernate both work like a champ. BTW, I also looked at “Programs and Features” and filtered it by “installed on” date. Those programs were loaded around the same time my computer started screwing up. That’s a good place to look right after your computer starts doing anything different.

Thankfully the only thing my battered Acer (32 bit Vista Home) did upon awaking from Hibernation was crash and reboot, no harm done. Since then, I’ve disabled the Hibernation feature to prevent a worse accident.

hangs after resume from sleep, hangs after resume from hibernate. If use msconfig to disable all startups and non MS services still hangs after resume from sleep and hibernate.

The below is almost certainly the cause:

steve on October 24, 2007 at 3:57 am said:
Hi guys

i see you all enjoy some of the issues with vista, we found machines we just couldnt fix and initially were advising folks to stay away from vista. then we made a discovery on the microsoft partners site. microsoft sent out an information brief to all computer builders advising them that vista needed to have acpi version 2 or higher on its bios for vista to work properly. we run a computer repair shop and nearly all the problem computers were on the cheaper end of the spectrum and we discovered that they were all mass produced and were all good mates with microsoft and were all selling out there old wharehouse stocks. all the machines had one thing in common. acpi version 1.1 on the bios.

its not on the microsoft technet because then it would be a known issue and those large companies who are now updating the bios or giving refunds to complaining clients on the quiet made a fortune while getting rid of there obsolete and not so vista compatible stocks. the info brief from microsoft said you must upgrade your bios to meet the requirements. i now upgrade the bios or replace the mother boards on the cheaper machines with the acpi issue and all is well.